Friday, January 25, 2013

Just in: delightful news, sent to us from Same Hat reader cat-heaven! Did you know that the NHK has a program called Renman that features professional artists facing off in a jam comic competition?? Where they meet and draw together on the same sheet of paper, then are judged by a panel of critics and television personalities?

And did you know... the January 6th episode of Renman featured a friendly faceoff between HIDESHI HINO and KAZUO UMEZU!?!?

NHK is notoriously on point about removing uploaded videos of their content, and I've yet to find a clip of this show... but I was able to grab some promotional images from their site, for your viewing pleasure!
The comic's theme was 初夢 (hatsuyume - "First dream of the new year") and the competition uses a chess clock approach, with 30 total minutes for each cartoonist. They start it off with a game of janken and Hideshi Hino wins, electing for Umezu to draw first.
Thanks to an Anonymous reader, here is the full episode (for now), enjoy!

OUR CHALLENGERS!...
Kazuo Umezu!!

And his opponent... Hideshi Hino!!

The episode's judges (Simon, Randy, Paula, Randy 2)

Umezu remains the happiest and sweetest person I've ever met

Hideshi Hino's horrible horror-drawing hands. I actually met him at ComicCon 2005 too, he was very sweet but much less friendly.

The Laughing Vampire/Grandpa

Facing off in their fancy, signature looks.

This is a scene from an imagined buddy film in my mind: "Grumpy Old Mangakas."

And finally, here is their comic! HIDESHI HINO vs. KAZUO UMEZU:
The winner as decided by the judges on the show: KAZUO UMEZU

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Exciting news comes to us from Comic Reporter's Tom Spurgeon, as we embark upon a 2013 full of strange and unexpected comics. He reports that PictureBox is launching a new manga line featuring old , called "Ten Cent Manga." The line (imprint?) will feature titles edited and translated by manga expert and Garoholic, Ryan Holmberg.

Head over to Comic Reporter's post for the full details. They have announced the following two titles will be released in 2013!

Last Of The Mohicans by Shigero Sugiura - May 2013

The Mysterious Underground Men (地底国の怪人)by Osamu Tezuka - October 2013

Below are some pages I dug up from Japanese edition of "Mysterious Underground Men"... I am extremely excited to see where the combined sensibilities of PB's Dan Nadel and Holmberg go in the coming months with this line... very good news for the Same Hat community.